I'm currently reading some chick lit. It's a book called Sushi for Beginners by the author Marian Keyes. It accompanies me on my train journeys to and from work, when my mind can't handle anything serious. And I paid £2 for it - it came free with a magazine, and the only reason I bought the brainless women's magazine was because I thought it was a good deal to get a magazine and a book for £2. That's me - Miss Bargain Hunter.
Anyways, one of the protagonists is this high-flying career woman and there was this paragraph in the book which said that Time Poverty, like the next Prada or Louis Vuitton bag, seems to be the in thing to have these days. It's directly proportional to how popular and important you are. It's ironic considering the meaning of the word "poverty".
You know, like people have no time to meet up with their friends because they're (a) travelling for work (b) going for some party (3) going for some pilates or yoga class (4) having some business appointment etcetc. So to meet up with them, you'll have to look at at least five different dates to fix an appointment. And even when an appointment is fixed, it's acceptable to cancel at the last minute, giving the reason that work or something life-threatening - like an appointment with one's hairdresser who's about to go on leave for 3 weeks - has taken you away from the appointment.
I mean, it's so true, isn't it? So many people these days are like that. There is no longer the spontaniety of just calling up a friend and say, "hey, do you want to meet for acuppa/dinner/movie later?" These days, you have to "book" people weeks or months in advance. Their appointment books are always full and their schedules are fixed months in advance.
So the equation of the day is: Time Poverty = kPopularity and/or Importance (where k is a variable constant)
Posted by DSD at July 23, 2007 2:36 PM